Abstract:

Increasingly, master’s students claim the link between theory and real practice. This request is justified, mainly, by the lack of professional experience of the student and/or by the student's academic profile that in many times is not related to the Business Administration. To solve this difficulties, we develop activities in class with the intention, among other objectives, that students have a vision of business reality, as well as to train students with skills related to real professional practice, especially in the use of tools for Strategic planning of Human Resources. This study is developed in the Master in Human Resources Management of the University of Cádiz (Spain).

In this paper, we propose the realization of a role-play. This tool allows us to simulate different managerial configurations that are presented in the business reality to respond to the student's request and thus bring them as close as possible to the day to day of the company.

We obtained results through a questionnaire based on a Likert-scale. The results obtained indicate that students value these activities very positively, both to better understand real business practice and to acquire or strengthen another series of more transversal competences. Thus, we can conclude that, although the subject is initially perceived as a complex subject, the activities carried out have helped to significantly reduce this perception. In addition, this type of learning positively influenced the level of attendance, motivation and active participation of students.

Keywords:

Educational Innovation, role-playing, Simulations, Master’s student.